KIRK DECIDES TO TRESPASS AND HIS LANDING PARTY ENDS UP IN A WESTERN

 Episode Title:  Spectre of the Gun  

Air Date: 10/25/1968

Written by Gene L. Coon

Directed by Vincent McEveety

Cast: William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk    Leonard Nimoy as Commander Spock             DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard H. McCoy AKA “Bones”              James Doohan  as Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott AKA “Scotty”        Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura          Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant Leslie                 Bill Blackburn as Lieutenant Hadley    Roger Holloway as Lieutenant Lemli       Walter Koenig as Ensign Pavel Chekov                 Jeannie Malone as unmanned Yeoman              Ron Soble as Wyatt Earp               Don Keefer as Bonnie Beecher        Charles Maxwell as Virgil Earp               Rex Holman as Morgan Earp            Sam Gilman as Doc Holliday            Charles Seel as Ed            Bill Zuckert as Johnny Behan              Ed McCready as Barber            Abraham Sofaer as Melkotian (voice)       Richard Anthony as Rider   Paul Baxley as 1st Cowboy     Bob Orrison as 2nd Cowboy                        Gregg Palmer as Rancher

Ships and Space Stations: USS Enterprise NCC-1701

Planets:  Melkos

My Spoiler filled summary and review: The Enterprise is on a mission to the planet Melkos under orders to make contact and establish diplomatic relations.   Since the Melkotians are known to be xenophobic this is going to prove to be quite the task.   As the ship gets closer a buoy shows up on an intercept course.  If the Enterprise alters its path the buoy follows.   The whole thing starts to be a reminder of The Corbomite Maneuver, until the buoy speaks.  Everyone on the bridge hears it in their own language.  Kirk hears English, Spock Vulcan, Ensign Chekov Russian, and Lt. Uhura hears it in Swahili.  The message is the same: stay away. 

Buoy wants them gone!

Now you would think an organization like the Federation would respect their wishes, but this is a crew that goes boldly.  So Kirk, citing his orders to establish peaceful relations says he intends to do just that whether the Melkotians want him to or not.  Kirk orders the Enterprise into orbit around the planet and forms a landing party of five (himself, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and Chekov) to beam down.  When they do they are surprised to discover fog as the sensors did not indicate they would have any.  The landing party also discovers that none of their equipment works.  A Melkotian revels themselves and Kirk tells them they are peaceful while pointing a phaser in their direction.

Melkotian who Kirk points a phaser at!

All of the sudden the world transforms around them and they are now in Tombstone, Arizona on October 26, 1881.  This was the day the famous Gun Fight at the O.K. Corral occurred.  However there is something terribly off.  It almost as if the Melkotians are short on their studio budget, for all the buildings only have a front wall with nothing on the sides or back.  All the townspeople are oblivious to the fact that their homes and businesses would be in a lot of trouble if it rained.  They also see the Enterprise landing party as the Clanton gang.  In particular Kirk is Ike Clanton, Scott is Billy Clanton, McCoy is Tom McLaury, Spock is Frank McLaury, and Chekov is Billy Claiborne.   Their phasers have been exchanged for six-shooter revolvers.  Spock concludes that the Melkotians have taken this from Captain Kirk’s mind because they hold him responsible for the intrusion. 

Okay we get to be in a Western

Not wanting to get in violent confrontation Kirk tries to reason with the Earps. He finds Wyatt Earp not in the mood to negotiate.  The only one of them who seems to be having a good time is Chekov whose character has the affections of a pretty girl named Bonnie.  Kirk gets desperate and tries to tell the towns people the truth and no one believes him thinking that he is joking.  With the truth failing Kirk and crew decide to get out of town, which ironically is what they should have done at the start of this episode.  However a force field prevents them from leaving. 

Since it appears the Melkotians are going to force them to relive the historic event as it happened Kirk doesn’t trust their six-shooters to work as a successful defense.  They decide to build a tranquilizer weapon that will knock out, not kill, their opponents.  McCoy ironically gets his supplies from Doc Holiday who is scheduled to shoot at him today.  While this is going on Morgan Earp comes to challenge Chekov over his girl.  Instead of a knife, Chekov makes a worse error and brings a charge to a gun fight and is promptly killed.

The remaining crew is devastated but there is one clear silver lining: Chekov’s character Billy Claiborne survived the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.  For the first time since they got here they were able to change something.  Kirk orders a test on the new tranquilizer weapon and Scotty volunteers.  Then in the funniest scene in the whole episode the weapon fails.  Kirk and crew decided to stay right where they are and not even go to the O.K. Corral.   However moments later they are transported straight there.

Normally they are the good guys!

Well it seems they are all doomed.  However Spock has an observation, the reason the tranquilizer failed is because it wasn’t real.  If that is not real neither are their weapons.  The other three point out that Chekov was killed, and then Spock said he wasn’t certain that he was but if so it was because his mind tricked him into thinking he was dead.  Spock knows their bullets are not real and therefore he cannot be harmed by them.  McCoy points out that as human beings they can’t be so certain, that is when Kirk suggests a mind meld to make them so.  Spock performs it and when Earps and Holiday show up their bullets pass right though the Starfleet officers harmlessly. 

That is when Kirk remembers that he is the greatest fighter in the known galaxy and decides to take down Wyatt Earp with moves based on such speed and grace that Earp is helpless in the attack.  Kirk is almost going to kill him but when he sees the fear in Earp’s eyes and remembers how his fight with the Gorn ended he relents.  This proves to the Melkotians that the Federation’s intentions are peaceful and with that the illusion ends and they are all now back on the Enterprise’s bridge with a living Chekov.   It had all been an illusion they had never left, and they conclude Chekov was alive because he was focused on the girl.  The Melkotians are satisfied and they invite the Federation in for continued contact making the Enterprise’s mission a success.   

Additional thoughts: This actually reminds me of an episode of The Real Ghostbusters that I watched as a kid.  In that episode the Ghostbusters also had to play he part of the Clantons, when the ghosts of the Earps and Doc Holiday came back to clean up the town again. 

Given that Starfleet has the Prime Directive it seems odd that they want their starship captains to establish contact with unknown aliens with instructions that by “contact” they mean exactly the type of relationship that the Federation deems as desirable regardless of what these new peoples want.  That seems almost imperialistic to me.   If Kirk’s orders were to make contact with the Melkotians the moment they encountered the buoy and its message was: “We are the Melkotians, now go away,” one would think Kirk would be like “Well, we made contact and they told us to pound sand, mission accomplished.”   Not the result they wanted but I fail to see why they shouldn’t accept it.

Kirk seems a little jealous of someone's luck!

So the Melkotians are powerful enough to reach inside your head to create powerful illusions yet they can’t finish the job with the same illusions.  Buildings missing three walls and only a skeleton population in the town, you would think if they were pulling this all out of Kirk’s head that they would be able to finish the job.  It turns out that the show really did run out of money in the budget so they had to be creative and that is what they came up with.  Good way of improvising on the part of Vincent McEveety.  

Yes, something is missing

Another thing that bothered me about the episode was Kirk’s extremely stupid behavior that I find really out of character.  Not only does he, under orders, try to impose himself on the Melkotians when he first sees one he points his phaser directly at them to demonstrate his peaceful intentions. During the illusion he suggests to Spock they should try to build a communicator to contact the ship where he should clearly see that whatever mechanism the Melkotians were using to cause their original communicators to malfunction will most likely also stop a coupled together one.  Worst was when he tried to reason with the townspeople that he and his friends were from “the future” and they weren’t the Clanton gang.  Kirk should have realized by the three walls missing on all the buildings that this was some sort of alien creation not an act of time travel.  He has time traveled to the 1960s not once but twice, and he went back to the 1920s via the Guardian of Forever.  He knows what time travel is like and this isn’t it.  These aren’t real people and there is no way they could be reached by having them feel the fabric of his shirt.  Kirk should be better than all of this.  I would expect more from Gene L. Coon. 

Then there is Spock, who not only seems to be completely on board with this whole trespass thing, is in this episode often “right” but for the “wrong” reasons.  The one character who is defined by logic and reason and yet his logic in this episode is as flawed as the buildings with missing walls.  The biggest moments of this are in the episode’s climax.  He concludes the bullets can’t hurt them because they are not real based on the fact that the tranquilizer failed where it otherwise should have worked.  Except that at this point we have already scene Chekov killed by the bullets.  The reason we are then given is that because Chekov believed the bullets were real that is why they could kill him, but Scotty had every reason to believe the tranquilizer was real and yet that failed.  Spock did add the Chekov might not be dead, I wish they stuck with that reasoning instead of ‘he’s dead because he believed.”  At least the ending would have made a little more sense.

Chekov's focus!

Chekov is clearly a lover not a fighter.  I mean when someone has a gun on you and you are armed that weapon is your best chance of survival not a charge.  Yet that is what we saw from our dear Ensign.  Now granted if you wanted to catch Morgan Earp in state of surprise then maybe there is some logic in a charge, I imagine he was quite surprised.  However his gun solved his problem as Indiana Jones’s would over a decade later.

I really did love the failed tranquilizer scene.  That was hilarious.  My favorite part is when it was clearly not working Scotty tires to help by sticking his face directly in the fumes!  At that point it was clearly a failure even if Scotty did pass out.  It’s not as if the Earps and Holiday are going to stick their faces in it.

FINAL  GRADE 3 of 5